What The New York Times describes as “this century’s gold rush — for natural gas” is such good news on so many levels, from jobs to domestic energy supplies, that of course it must be debunked.

Hence a lengthy, lurid piece by The Times the other day alleging that despite “significant environmental risks,” regulators have been “lax” in overseeing the “relatively new drilling method — known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking.”

The analysis that followed, alas, contained notable problems, as the former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, John Hanger, outlined on his blog. For example, “It certainly is helpful to a narrative of lax oversight and regulation to exclude from the main article just about all the oversight and regulatory activity taken by the Department of Environmental Protection. But that is the main method of this reporter . . . .”

Colorado’s rules are not specifically faulted by The Times — except by implication — but critics of fracking here routinely hurl similar accusations of lax regulation at the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, too.

Last month, for example, a landowner in Las Animas County filed testimony with the commission alleging that regulators provide “inadequate oversight, and even when incidents are brought to [their] attention, unless it is completely undeniable, problems are far more likely to be swept under the rug than fully investigated and corrected.”

Sounds pretty bad, so I thought I’d read the agency’s case reports to see how Tracy Dahl was treated following his complaint last year that his water well had been contaminated by fracking at a nearby gas well.

How about responsiveness? Well, Dahl registered his complaint on June 30 and a state inspector was at his water well the very next morning to begin testing. Remember, Dahl lives in what he calls “the backwoods,” not exactly a stone’s throw from the nearest state office.

Nor was the inspector, Peter Gintautas, a low-level drone, but a scientist with a Ph.D. in chemistry.

Gintautas not only collected water samples, he also had them shipped to labs that very day. He returned on July 8 for more samples of water and sediment, shipped them immediately, too, and returned yet again on July 14. The samples were tested for antimony, arsenic, barium, beryllium, cadmium, chromium and a host of other substances — more than 30, all told. A battery of other tests was run on everything from methane gas to volatile organic compounds and bacteria. Gintautas describes the results in his final report of Dec. 1.

His conclusion: “The inorganic chemistry of water from your well is not similar to coal bed methane (CBM) produced water that was used for the fracture treatment . . . and does not appear to have been impacted by CBM operations.” He then detailed a number of reasons why any relationship was extremely unlikely, citing not only the chemistry but also water level records and pressure and pumping records at the gas well.

Still not satisfied, Dahl requested a hearing before the full commission — and was granted one in short order. The commission’s unanimous verdict: fracking was not at fault.

None of this is to suggest that oil and gas drilling is without environmental impacts, or that they can’t occasionally be severe (see: Deepwater Horizon). But the ever-growing drumbeat against fracking refuses to acknowledge even elementary facts. Despite hundreds of investigations no less thorough than the one I’ve described, the state has never confirmed a single instance of fracking fluids migrating into water wells from where they were first injected.

Moreover, as COGCC executive director David Neslin told me, the state takes data from all water wells within 1 mile of a drilling site, requiring water well testing just after drilling and three and six years later, among numerous measures.

Could the state do more? Maybe. But those who say it’s asleep at the switch have forfeited credibility.

Many were not surprised by the prompt verdict Monday in the sexual-assault case in Denver involving Taylor Swift. A jury of six women and two men concluded within hours that a Denver radio host had groped Swift _ grabbed her butt beneath her skirt during a photo shoot, as his wife stood on the other side of Swift.

Touch not that statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville. Let it stand, but around it place plaques telling the curious that the man was a traitor to his country who went to war so white people could continue to own black people.